"It's a great honor being able to do something for my country," Demiray said

OTTAWA, December 11 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Suleyman Demiray, a Turkish-born Muslim Imam who immigrated to Canada 10 years ago, made history Wednesday, December 10, becoming the first Muslim chaplain in the Canadian Armed Forces after completing a 14-week chaplaincy training.

"It's a great honor being able to do something for my country," he said after a graduation ceremony that included a reading from the holy Qur'an.

Demiray, who approached the military and asked to be accepted into chaplain training, does not anticipate any problems fitting in when he joins the 10-member chaplain team at CFB Edmonton next month, reported the Toronto Star Thursday, December 11.

"I'm hoping people will accept my ministry or allow me to accommodate their needs by bringing in someone of their faith," said Demiray, wearing a crescent moon insignia on his lapel instead of the chaplain's traditional Maltese cross.

The new chaplain said his wife Emine and sons Selman, 7, and Numan, 6, support his decision to leave Ottawa where he worked as a hospital chaplain after graduating with a master's degree in religion from Carleton University.

Only 200 of the nearly 60,000 members of the Canadian Forces are Muslim.

Changing Environment

The decision to accept Demiray into the chaplain training indicates that the military is now becoming as diverse as the country it serves, Chaplain-General Brig.-Gen. Ron Bourque was quoted by the Star as saying.

"It's a changing environment," Bourque, a Roman Catholic priest who leads the force's 311 chaplains, told the newspaper.

The military has expanded its horizons by recruiting Muslim chaplains after relying for years on Roman Catholic priests and mainstream Protestant ministers to fill the chaplain ranks in order to reflect the structure of the society.

Bourque noted how the Onward Christian Soldiers - the chaplaincy's regimental song - has been scrapped to mark the launch of the forces' new interfaith mandate.

Instead, Beethoven's "Ode To Joy" will be played at regimental dinners and marches to honor any chaplains present, he said.

In May, a census showed that Islam, with a population of some 1.3 million, had become the number one non-Christian faith in Quebec and Canada as a whole.

It attributed the obvious increase to Muslims immigration from south Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, making Islam the fastest growing religion in the country.

End Racial Profiling

However, a fresh human rights report in Ontario unveiled that the authorities in the country should do more to face up to racial profiling against religious and ethnic groups, including Muslims.

The report was based on more than 400 accounts of racial profiling that people gave to the commission during an inquiry held this year, said the CBC News.

The accounts came from people not only of African descent, but also from aboriginals, Muslims, Arabs, people of South Asian and East Asian descent, and white people who experienced profiling because of their relationships with people of these origins.

The commission recommended the creation of a racial diversity secretariat for Ontario to report on racism in the province and to follow up on the recommendations of previous reports on racial profiling.